In this morning’s newspaper I came across an article which I think has some bearing on my recent blog about Individual Worlds (7/31/2015). The idea that certain events can be analyzed into two different and opposite descriptions is called complementarity. For example, depending upon how a physicist is viewing light, it can be thought of either as a wave or as a stream of particles, and in some cases the idea also applies to the macro world. The article this morning was about literature teachers and their problems in reconciling Atticus Finch, the champion of justice in To Kill a Mockingbird, with Atticus Finch, the racist in Go Set a Watchman . Now that we know all about complementarity, it’s not difficult to resolve the dilemma. Atticus views the defense of Tom Robinson as a matter of justice vs. racism. It’s just wave (justice) vs. particle (racism). Although a racist, the young Atticus was first and foremost a believer in justice. Perhaps if he had been in his 70s wh...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.